Some New Faces and A Handful of World Premieres as Florida Unveils American Independent Competition,

Some New Faces and A Handful of World Premieres as Florida Unveils American Independent Competition,

Some New Faces and A Handful of World Premieres as FloridaUnveils American Independent Competition, and Announces Opening Night Film

by Eugene Hernandez

Twenty independent films are screening in the American Independent FilmCompetition at the 1998 Florida Film Festival, running June 12 – 21, 1998in Orlando, Florida. The Central Florida event, which has emerged as aleading regional film festival, will open with a screening of RichardBieman’s “A Merry War“, adaptation of George Orwell’s “Keep the AspidistraFlying”. The films stars Helena Bonham Carter and Richard E. Grant.

The 1998 festival approaches with a few new faces in place at theEnzian organization, the not-for-profit group that produces the festival.Near the end of last year’s fest, Executive Director Sigrid Tiedtkeannounced that she would step down and introduced attendees to herreplacement, Melanie Gasper. Tiedtke remained involved as a memberof the programming committee this year. Another departing organizerwas media and marketing head Mike Monello, who also remained involvedas a programmer. Monello’s replacement Rich Grula offered that hisfocus has been to cultivate greater festival awareness among the localcommunity, building on the success of the festival’s homebase EnzianTheater — a popular dinner theater/art house in adjacent Maitland.Grula told indieWIRE that the festival sold 15,000 tickets last year,and with more screenings this year, expectations are that sales willexceed that number.

Program Director Matthew Curtis said that he received over 500submissions, a 25% jump over last year. Commenting on the 1998program, Curtis highlighted the three premieres in the dramaticcompetition, and also noted the strength of the documentary competition.While last year was recognized as a strong year for non-fiction featuresat the Florida Fest, thanks to screenings of the fest award-winning“Hands On A Hardbody” and the Oscar nominated “Waco: the Rules ofEngagement, Curtis said, “The docs last year were phenomenallystrong,” noting, “this year comes close.” Curtis, a former salesdirector for Corinth Films proclaimed, “We could have easilydoubled the doc section…there were a lot of really fine docs thatwe did not have the room for.”